Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The British Library is featuring the exhibition "Arthur Conan Doyle: The Unknown Novel" to coincide with this week's publication of The Narrative of John Smith, which was originally lost in the mail. The exhibition displays the manuscript of the novel along with items from the library's Conan Doyle collections and is on view until Jan. 5, 2012. The book is introduced by Conan Doyle estate representative Jon Lellenberg, Conan Doyle biographer Daniel Stashower, and British Library manuscript curator Rachel Foss.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Richard Denning and Barbara
Britton as Jerry and Pam North
in "Till Death Do Us Part"Mr. and Mrs. North (1952)

Richard Lockridge, who created New York sleuthing couple Pam and Jerry North with his first wife, Frances, was born today in St. Joseph, MO, in 1898. He served in the Navy during World War I and II and as a reporter and drama critic for the New York Sun. The first North book was The Norths Meet Murder (1940), and the Norths (not to mention their famous Siamese cats Martini, Sherry, and Gin) went on to popularity in theater, radio, and television adaptations in addition to their appearances in some 25 novels and one short story. The Lockridges received an Edgar in 1946 for best radio drama and served jointly as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1960. Richard, who produced approximately 90 books over the course of his career, died in 1982.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

McFarland has posted some preliminary details on Ed McBain/ Evan Hunter: A Literary Companion by Erin E. MacDonald, volume 3 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit (volume 1 on John Buchan; volume 2 on E. X., aka Elizabeth, Ferrars). It is tentatively scheduled for publication in spring/summer 2012. In this work MacDonald, who wrote her dissertation on McBain, provides comprehensive coverage of the multifaceted career of this author/screenwriter and MWA Grand Master who was a pioneer of the police procedural.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

JSTOR announced on Sept. 6 that it would permit free access to issues of certain periodicals published before 1923 (list here). This means unfettered access to items such as the following:

• "The Modern Novel," by Amelia E. Barr, North American Review, Nov. 1894. "...[I]f people enjoy the game between criminals and detectives, the question is simply whether the exhibition is, or is not, a moral one—whether the details of crime, the telling of how it was done, how it was concealed, and how it was found out, may not be a kind of criminal school, for those whose inclinations lead them in that direction" (593–94).

William A. Pinkerton,
left, and Robert A.
Pinkerton, ca. 1855.
Library of Congress

David Frome/Leslie Ford. Zenith Jones Brown began her mystery career with Murder of an Old Man (1929) under the pseudonym David Frome,followed by more than 15 Frome mysteries and more than 30 mysteries under the name Leslie Ford. Her sleuths include Mr. Pinkerton, Inspector Bull, Colonel Pickering, and Grace Latham. The bookstore Mystery Loves Company selected Ford's Girl from the Mimosa Club (1957) as one of the best mysteries of the 20th century.

Anthony Gilbert. Lucy Beatrice Malleson, a relative of actor Miles Malleson (Kind Hearts and Coronets, etc.), wrote 32 books under the four pseudonyms of Anne Meredith, J. Kilmeny Keith, Sylvia Denys Hooke, and Lucy Egerton. However, vulgar lawyer Arthur Crook is the star of most of the 60 novels under Malleson's pen name of Anthony Gilbert.Crook debuted in Murder by Experts (1936); the final Gilbert book was A Nice Little Killing (1974).A Detection Club member, she was an Edgar nominee for "Door to a Different World" (EQMM Mar. 1970) and "Fifty Years After" (EQMM Mar. 1973).

Evelyn Piper. Merriam Modell, wife of a Cornell pharmacology professor, wrote stories for the New Yorker and the novel The Sound of Years (1946), but it was under the name Evelyn Piper that she published her most well-known work: Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957, film 1965). Other Piper books include the Edgar-nominated The Innocent (1949), the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work The Motive (1950; called by the New York Times "a fine study in the detection not of who, but of why"), The Plot (1951), The Lady and Her Doctor(1956), Hanno's Doll (1961),The Naked Murderer (1962), The Nanny (1964, film 1965), and The Stand-In (1970).

Dell Shannon. Illinois-born author Elizabeth Linington wrote under the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Egan O'Neill, and Leslie Egan, as well as her own name; her police procedurals under the name Dell Shannon feature the LAPD's Luis Mendoza, including the Edgar-nominated novels Case Pending (1960) and Knave of Hearts (1962).

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Happy to see that Orion has just reissued MWA Grand Master Margaret Millar's Edgar-winning Beast in View (1955), as she often has been overshadowed by her famous writer husband, Ross Macdonald. Summed up Anthony Boucher in the Dec. 4, 1955, New York Times re Beast in View: "Devilishly devious trick-plotting given substance by acute and terrifying psychological insight." Stark House Press has republished Millar's An Air that Kills/Do Evil in Return.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Shadow #49,
"The Shadow Laughs" and
"The Voice of Death"
Nostalgia Ventures

Walter B. Gibson, the man who popularized the crime-fighting Lamont Cranston/The Shadow in the pulp magazines and wrote numerous other works, was born today in Philadelphia in 1897. This year marks the 80th anniversary of The Shadow's first appearance in the pulps. Go here to see Gibson discuss the pulp novel; here to listen to the radio program of The Shadow.

• Carole Nelson Douglas. As a college senior, Douglas was a finalist in Vogue's Prix de Paris writing competition (along with future fellow mystery novelist Marcia Muller). She was a reporter and feature writer for the St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press for more than 15 years and received several awards from the Newspaper Guild of the Twin Cities and a second-place award in newswriting from the Minnesota Associated Press. Today, Douglas has a busy mystery writing life, with her Irene Adler, Midnight Louie, and Delilah Street paranormal series.

• Gillian Linscott. Linscott was a journalist for the Liverpool Daily Post, the Birmingham Post, the Guardian, and the BBC for nearly 25 years. A versatile writer, she has penned historical mysteries featuring intrepid suffragist Nell Bray (such as the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger winner Absent Friends) and standalones such as The Garden. Today, she writes a mystery series set in the Victorian era under the pen name Caro Peacock.

• Eve K. Sandstrom. Inspired to pursue journalism by reporter-sleuth Beverly Gray, Sandstrom was a reporter and columnist at the Lawton (OK) Constitution for more than 25 years. She published several mysteries with Sam and Nicky Titus as well as reporter Nell Matthews, was an Agatha and Anthony nominee for her short story "Bugged" in Malice Domestic 5, and now features chocolatier Lee McKinney in her mysteries under the pen name JoAnna Carl.

Detection Club member and British Crime Writers Assn cofounder Ferrars published her first book, Turn Single, in 1932, and the last, A Choice of Evils, in 1995. Her sleuths include physiotherapist Virginia Freer and her estranged, often feckless husband Felix and retired professor Andrew Basnett (who often poignantly grapples with the effects of aging). Some of her books are still in print with Langtail Press and Doubleday, and Doug Greene of Crippen and Landru plans a collection of her short stories. Very helpful with the book was Peter Mactaggart, Ferrars's nephew and literary executor, who provided the cover photo, manuscript excerpts (including one from an unpublished novel), and valuable insights on Ferrars's life. Readers may like the handy table that lists Ferrars's methods of murder and the works in which they appear.

One fascinating aspect was her duel in print with sci-fi writer John Wyndham over the merits of mystery fiction vs. those of sci-fi.

Another intriguing discovery was "We Haven't Seen Her Lately," the 1958 Kraft Mystery Theatre production of Ferrars's Always Say Die (see photo), in which a woman investigates her aunt's disappearance amid a slew of shady characters.

Friday, September 02, 2011

"...my long acquaintance with the criminal class was not to my disadvantage."—George R. Sims, My Life 322

Playwright, poet, writer, bulldog breeder, and bon vivant George R. Sims was born today in London in 1847. In mysterydom, he is best known as the creator of female sleuth Dorcas Dene, who is featured in Dorcas Dene, Detective (1897–98). He frequently wrote about crime, and a reference in My Life, his autobiography, makes it clear that he knew Adam Worth, the master criminal who stole the Gainsborough painting The Duchess of Devonshire. He died in 1922.